Issues with FireFox v1.0.5 -- And their Lack of Openness

It seems there are some really weird problems with FireFox v1.0.5 -- really weird.  I installed it since it was supposed to be an important bug-fix release, and it worked fine for a day or two.  Then all of the sudden it just quit working -- and I mean it quit working.  The main window would display, but no page would load, my bookmark toolbar was gone, and all the menus and functions just quit working.  I could not even type into the navigation box to try another url, nor could I type into the Google search box -- FireFox was broken.  I could not even get a second window to ever appear when I tried to start another instance, I got no errors or warnings, and there did not appear to be anything unusual going on when I looked at my task manager.  I tried reinstalling it, I uninstalled it and tried it again, I uninstalled it and tried reinstalling v1.0.4 (which I luckily still had since Mozilla doesn't seem to keep old versions around in any obvious place, if at all) -- nothing worked.  Luckily IE was still working just fine, and I was able to determine that this is apparently something that is happening quite a bit with v1.0.5 -- so much so that they told their developers to quit working on localizing it and just wait for v1.0.6 very soon.  It seems some people have found some spyware on their machines and once they got rid of it then it started working again, but that doesn't seem to be the case for many others -- nor did I find any spyware on my system so that plan didn't help me.  The only thing that seemed to be the universal fix was reported to get the current build, which I believe is reported to be a release candidate for v1.0.6 -- so I got the latest build, installed it, and everything now works again.  Now the most frustrating thing about all of this is that I could not find any official confirmation from the Mozilla folks that this is a confirmed issue -- just like its been reported many times before that they don't seem to be very open and forthcoming on security issues.  I'm not saying I have any clue how to manage issues like this any better, especially when its such a critical component in the security of our computers as web browsers are in today's world -- but it seems that at this rate FireFox may end up being their own worst enemy.

10 Comments

  • Hmmm, I guess that is why there is not Firefox 1.0.5 for those us running 1.0.4.

  • I have no probs with 1.0.5.



    Perhaps some extension is messing up?

  • I didn't have any problems either for a while, nor did many of the other people that have reported similar issues -- so good luck. :) Seriously, I don't know if its guaranteed to eventually strike everyone or not, but it is certainly occurring at some point later than installation for some of us.

  • Hi Paul



    I had similar problems with an earlier Firefox update (1.0.3 I think) and the User Agent Switcher extension. Things worked OK immediately after the update and then it died a few days later.



    The solution was to start Firefox in Safe Mode (see the Mozilla Firefox start menu folder for this shortcut) and then disable all extensions.



    It's a bit painful, but I enabled each extension individually, closed safe mode Firefox and re-opened normal Firefox until I found the offending extension.



    Once I found it, uninstalling and then installing it again fixed it.

  • Frans is right, I would bet it is an extension too, do Start/Run with firefox -p, that will allow you to setup and change to a new profile which will have no extensions, see if you get the same problem.

  • please check your extentions they hang fire fox sometime,do a clean install

  • The same thing happens in 1.0.4 for me. It seems to be related to plugins. Generally, closing the browser then re-opening it once or twice will fix the issue for a while.



    Hopefully the fix will be released soon as it really is the only issue I've ever had with it.

  • Well I'm not going to go back and try the previous version right now to see if it could in fact just be extensions -- so you may be right. But take a look in the Mozilla forums, and elsewhere, and you'll see that there are many (far more knowledgeable than I) that feel this is a bigger issue with v1.0.5. And the fact is that the Mozilla team has told those working on localization to wait for v1.0.6 since v1.0.5 is so bad -- although they aren't very open on just what is so bad, nor do they seem to respond to those making claims like mine. And its this type of "support", which I've heard others mention on more than one occasion about other issues, that is going to make it hard for FireFox to be useable by the common non-techie. And don't get me wrong -- I'm not a MS drone -- I've been using FireFox, got my family using it, and recommend it to my friends -- but this type of things makes me wonder if that was the right decision.

  • The general outrage mentioned in that News.com article kind of gets to what I perceive as a weakness to open source stuff. You didn't pay for it, so what right do you have to complain? I mean, I complain about Microsoft from time to time and they don't necessarily respond, but at least I have someone to bitch about. :)

  • Yup, thanks for your comments. The same just happened to me in v1.0.6. Bringing it up with a "no extensions" profile fixed it.

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